Evangelicals deserting ahead of 2008 election

By Sandi Dolbee

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 14, 2007

Union-Tribune photo illustration

Republicans have a Mormon whose religion gives some people pause and a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Democrats have front-runners who are turning Scripture into sound bites. And Christian conservatives are threatening to back a third-party candidate.

The civic union of God and politics is stepping back up to the altar of presidential elections. But this time around, the powerful evangelical vote may be up for grabs.

“It really is an interesting moment in the role of faith and politics,” said Burns Strider, who directs faith-based operations for the 2008 presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

The biggest change is that after more than two decades as a voting bloc for the GOP, white evangelical Christians are showing signs of buyer's remorse and a greater interest in matters beyond abortion and traditional culture-war issues.

Three years ago, more than 80 percent of evangelicals who attend church weekly cast their vote for President Bush's re-election, according to polls conducted for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It was the culmination of a bond going back to 1980, when Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

PRESIDENTIAL FRONT-RUNNERS AND FAITH

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Religion: United Methodist

Quote: “The whole Bible gives you a glimpse of God and God's desire for a personal relationship, but we can't possibly understand every way God is communicating with us.”

SOURCE: The New York Times

John Edwards

Religion: United Methodist

Quote: “My personal faith guides and affects my personal decisions in my personal life. But as president of the United States, I (would) have a constitutional responsibility to all of the American people, which means to all people of all faiths.”

SOURCE: Interfaith Alliance

Barack Obama

Religion: United Church of Christ

Quote: “Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it.”

SOURCE: Speech at Call to Renewal conference

REPUBLICANS

Rudy Giuliani

Religion: Roman Catholic

Quote: “I think in a democracy and in a government like ours, my religion is my way of looking at God, and other people have other ways of doing it, and some people don't believe in God. I think that's unfortunate. I think their life would be a lot fuller if they did, but they have that right.”

SOURCE: Christian Broadcasting Network

John McCain

Religion: Baptist

Quote: “Since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know has a grounding in my faith.”

SOURCE: Beliefnet.com

Mitt Romney

Religion: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Quote: “I doubt very seriously anyone in the world is going to join my church simply because they see a leader who is a member of it.”

SOURCE: Christianity Today

Fred Thompson

Religion: Church of Christ

Quote: “I know that I'm right with God and the people I love,” explaining that he doesn't attend church regularly and won't dwell on religion in the campaign.

SOURCE: Bloomberg.com

But this year's Pew polls show the Christian right's support for Republicans shrinking to 60 percent. The slide is deeper among other religious voters who supported Bush – down to less than 40 percent among practicing Catholics and 20 percent for other Christians.

“That's really quite a dramatic change,” said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron and a senior fellow in religion and politics at the Pew Forum.

A significant number of religious people “are ready to make a change and consider voting for a Democratic candidate” in the 2008 presidential race, Green said.

An important dynamic, he said, is that many conservative Christians are increasingly expressing concerns about such things as the war in Iraq, AIDS in Africa and global warming.

“There's pressure to broaden the agenda . . . to apply the Gospel to a broader list of questions,” Green said.

Evangelical discontent

But disenchantment with the top Republican presidential contenders and the party's performance appears to be the prime reason why, politically, evangelicals seem an unsettled lot.

As Green was speaking to the Religion Newswriters Association convention in San Antonio last month, more than 50 Christian conservative leaders were heading for a meeting in Salt Lake City to consider backing a third-party candidate.

At that meeting, participants overwhelmingly voted that “if neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate,” wrote James Dobson, head of the influential Focus on the Family organization in Colorado Springs, Colo., in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.

“Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand,” Dobson wrote. “The result was almost unanimous.”

The principal target of the conservatives' angst is Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who supports abortion and gay rights. Giuliani, a Roman Catholic, ranks high in popularity polls, though many people surveyed said they weren't certain of his positions.

“As horrifying as it seems, Hillary Clinton would be a better president for the pro-life movement than Rudy Giuliani,” Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said in a recent statement. “Therefore our mission is simple: Deny Giuliani the Republican nomination. Failing that, we must deny him the White House at all costs – even if it means Hillary becomes president.”

Many evangelicals also are lukewarm about GOP front-runners who are considered more conservative and friendly to their causes than Giuliani.

They seem to have backed away from Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee. Among other complaints is that Thompson, who lists his religion as Church of Christ, admittedly doesn't go to church much.

Then there's Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The former Massachusetts governor ranks high in surveys as being one of the most religious candidates on the GOP list, but many evangelicals are wary because they don't consider Mormons to be Christians.

Green said pollsters are surprised by this “significant resistance” to Romney – especially those looking for parallels between his campaign and the 1960 election, in which Americans elected Democrat John F. Kennedy as the nation's first Roman Catholic president.

“There are exceptions, and Mormons are apparently part of that exception,” Green said.

Showing religion

Democrats are eagerly jumping into the proverbial baptismal pool of religious voters.

When Clinton works the campaign trail, her aide Strider says she'll repeatedly call him over to the receiving line to connect with a minister, rabbi or some other religious person.

He said he has found a receptive audience – and not just among religions that traditionally support the Democratic Party, such as liberal Christians and Jewish groups.

“All of a sudden, you realize there's a potential for something,” said Strider, who directed religious outreach for the House Democratic Caucus and was the lead staffer for the Democrats' Faith Working Group.

In June, the three top-tier Democratic candidates – Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina – openly spoke about their religious beliefs and values in an unusual forum dedicated to that subject and broadcast on CNN.

Clinton and Edwards are United Methodists and Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ, a connection that observers say could hurt him in the general election because the liberal Protestant denomination ordains practicing gays and lesbians. Polls show that Clinton is considered the least religious of the three, a perception that Green said could hurt her in the general election.

While a key issue in the tug of war for conservative votes is abortion, at least one evangelical leader indicates there may be some room for compromise for candidates who support keeping it legal.

“The Democratic Party must shift from being a party of abortion to a party of abortion reduction,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the 15 million-strong National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals in Sacramento.

More than two-thirds of Latino evangelicals voted Republican in 2004. “That will never repeat itself in 2008 because of the recent debate on immigration reform,” Rodriguez said.

As for black Protestants, there is a “fierce battle” between Clinton and Obama, according to Green, of the Pew Forum. Obama hopes to become the first black Democratic nominee for president, but Green said many African-Americans “have a real affection for Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

Tempting fate 'Tempting Faith'

Seeds of the GOP-evangelical erosion were planted long before this presidential campaign started.

“There is some real discontent with President Bush and Republican leadership,” Green said.

That disappointment was made dramatically public a year ago, when former White House staffer David Kuo came out with “Tempting Faith,” a best-selling book that said the Bush administration made fun of evangelicals and only courted them to get their vote.

The White House betrayed “the millions of faithful Christians who put their trust and hope in the president and his administration,” wrote Kuo, a conservative Christian who until 2003 was deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Tamara Scott, a conservative Christian activist who worked on Bush's re-election campaign in Iowa, chides GOP politicians for “not following through on their promises that got them elected.” Evangelicals were counting on more results on such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Scott, who runs Iowa's chapter of Concerned Women for America, isn't wild about the most popular GOP candidates. Instead, she gushes about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose campaign slogan is “faith, family and freedom.”

She does, however, mention that candidate John McCain, a Republican senator and Baptist from Arizona, called her at home while she was scolding her children over their piano lessons.

If nothing else, that story illustrates how seriously presidential politicians continue to take the religious vote.

And Christianity isn't the only religion that could affect the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. President Bush won the Muslim vote in 2000, according to exit polls, but that has dramatically changed because of the response to Sept. 11 and the Patriot Act.

“The thing to watch in the Muslim vote is whether it's energized,” Green said. If next year's election is close, that bloc “could be quite important.”

Even as analysts and strategists plot the potency of the religious vote, others are shuddering at the thought of faith being used to pave the path to the White House.

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington, D.C., is among them. He offered this caution: “Candidates must remember that they are running for commander in chief and not 'pastor in chief.' ”